NYT journalist: My email was hacked in Beijing

Filed Under: Data loss

Andrew Jacobs
A journalist with the New York Times, based in Beijing, China, has written about how his Yahoo email account was hacked in order to surreptitiously forward his incoming messages to an unknown third party.

It was only after reporter Andrew Jacobs had struggled with peculiarities with his email setup for a few weeks that he explored his online settings, and discovered someone had breached his Yahoo account, as he explained in a recent article:

For weeks, friends and colleagues complained I had not answered their e-mail messages. I swore I had not received them.

My e-mail program began crashing almost daily. But only when all my contacts disappeared for the second time did suspicion push me to act.

I dug deep inside my Yahoo settings, and I shuddered. Incoming messages had been forwarding to an unfamiliar e-mail address, one presumably typed in by intruders who had gained access to my account.

I'd been hacked.

According to Jacobs, scores of foreign correspondents in China have reported similar intrusions into their email accounts.

Jacobs' account of his Yahoo account being hacked comes in the wake of increased reports of cyber-espionage alleged to have originated in China, much of it aimed against people commentating on issues related to China and Taiwan.

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About the author

Graham Cluley is senior technology consultant at Sophos. The readers of Computer Weekly voted him security blogger of the year in 2009 and 2010, and he pipped Stephen Fry to the title of "Twitter user of the year" too. Which was nice. He was also named "Best Security Blogger" by the readers of SC Magazine in 2011. You can subscribe to Graham's updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.